8 - 14 November 2001
Issue No.559
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 8 - 14 November 2001 Issue No.559 |
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In memoriam
La Cité des morts, Galila El Kadi and Alain Bonnamy, Paris: Institut de Recherches pour le Développement (IRD), MARDAGA, 2001. pp303
The cemeteries of Cairo, known loosely as the city of the dead, have been the object of great curiosity among tourists and foreign students alike. Mostly, however, their interest is ignited for all the wrong reasons: namely, that the tombs of the dead are also used as permanent dwellings by the living. Pseudo-sociological studies have sprouted, pointing out to this unusual state of affairs -- although Cairo is by no means the only country featuring such an anomaly; undue curiosity and compassion have been lavished on the inhabitants, while foreign visitors often display extraordinary pride at having ventured into the foreboding cemeteries, sometimes going so far as to befriend the tombs' occupants, accepting an invitation to share a meal with them. They have usually emerged from the experience convinced that they have been in touch with the quintessential spirit of the place.
Galila El Kadi's La Cité des morts dispels many of the Orientalist myths attached to the space reserved to the dead, but shared in many ways by the living. A consummate urban planner and historian, El Kadi retraces the origins of the large burial grounds that extend within the city for a distance of 12km from north to south.
She has intimate personal knowledge of the cemeteries, having played among the tombs as a child while her family came on the traditional days to honour their dead. After an absence of 15 years, she returned in 1985, ready to confront her memories with the eyes of an expert. With maps in hand and sophisticated photographic equipment, she and Bonnamy relentlessly walked the different areas, updating information, noting the new and old streets and new highways bisecting the city of the dead, and painstakingly examining each and every tomb or vacant plot.
This book is the result of several years of sustained scholarly labour. The finished product is a splendid work, filled with maps and rather stunning photographs that shed light on this most intriguing part of the capital. If any criticism at all should be levelled at this oeuvre, it is in a small detail: namely, the absence of sufficiently elaborate captions to explain the pictures.
El Kadi's first discovery concerns the dwellers of the city of the dead. The 1986 census had put their numbers at 109,673. Her own records showed that the numbers of regular dwellers do not exceed 13,000, and these, she says, generally live in pockets of apartment blocks built between the tombs -- a phenomenon indicative of the authorities' indifference to law enforcement, the absence of clear demarcation, and the natural encroachment of the city on the once peripheral cemeteries. As for the dwellers of the tombs, unlike the poor in informal settlements, they are relatively privileged, she notes, since they occupy solid buildings of stone or brick, endowed with floors of marble or cut stone and featuring several spacious rooms, a clear improvement on the eshash of their economically-challenged counterparts.
But El Kadi's real interest lies in a different direction, or rather changed focus after her first few visits. One thousand years of rich architecture, comprising a great diversity of styles, stand forgotten in this space, periodically threatened by the authorities, whose urbanisation projects include the elimination of the cemeteries, or parts thereof, from the perimeter of the city and their transfer to an as yet undetermined location in the desert. With the expansion of the megalopolis, the dead have come to occupy a priceless piece of real estate that inspires developers' most vivid dreams. Even if no preposterous development scheme has been acted upon yet, argues El Kadi, nothing protects this patrimony from piecemeal destruction.
A case in point, she writes, is the partial demolition of Bab Al-Nasr cemetery in a bid to expose the walls of Fatimid Cairo. To highlight the damage thus wrought on the funerary complex, El Kadi organised an exhibition on the grounds, with a dual aim: to show the treasures of architecture that had been destroyed or were about to disappear, on one hand; and, on the other, to present a project for a funerary park in which the unique wooden tombs of Bab Al-Nasr would be showcased.
That was not enough, she thought; forecasting more devastation, she felt the need for a definitive record of Cairo's main cemeteries. Hence this book, divided into seven chapters.
The first deals with the evolution of funerary rites in the Nile Valley. The following three are dedicated to the discovery of the three principal necropolises of Cairo: the southern cemetery, known as the Qarafa; Bab Al-Nasr, the wooden cemetery; and finally the eastern cemetery, which includes the tombs of the Caliphs. The topography, including the various arteries dissecting the terrain, is clearly indicated, together with the evolution of the space from its inception to this day. Tombs of interest are described extensively, with floor plans provided and their history discussed at length. The portrayal of the tombs is not reserved to those constructed by known architects or those featuring a particular style, but include funerary edifices like that of Soliman Agha Al-Salihdar (1858). Founded by his wife, Zeinab Khatun, this building, writes El Kadi, is not a monument; nor does it have a particular historical interest beyond its aptitude to represent the state of architecture before the advent of "Islamic mannerism," which developed toward the end of the 19th century in opposition to growing Western influence.
Chapter 5 describes the city of dead as shelter for the destitute, while chapter 6 determines what is really at stake in the preservation of this patrimony. In her short concluding seventh chapter, El Kadi crowns this very interesting survey with a simple question: "What is to be done?"
A few years ago, she recounts, the minister of housing quipped that relocating the necropolis of Cairo would be an act blessed by heaven. "If this option is no longer on the agenda," she writes, "no alternative project has been instituted. In the beginning of the 1980s, the safeguard of the heritage became a new way of attracting foreign organisations' funds and resulted in the presentation of a number of schemes for the rehabilitation of the historical fabric." UNESCO presented a comprehensive study, which resulted in the initiation of several important preservation projects.
El Kadi, while taking into account the recommendations of this organisation regarding the zoning and conservation of the Islamic heritage, delves in greater detail into the study of the city of the dead, and identifies four major types of spaces:
1. Those exclusively occupied by tombs, which do not include important monuments but feature tomb-palaces in rather good condition, displaying remarkable architectural traits. Cases in point are the central part of the southern necropolis and the northern side of the Mamluks' necropolis.
2. Those exclusively occupied by wooden tombs of some architectural value, surrounding majestic monuments: this is the case of the cemetery of Bab Al-Nasr north of the Fatimid wall, Bab Al-Wazir at the foot of the Citadel, and the northern sector of Sayeda Nefisa, south of Ibn Tulun Mosque. The renovation of these spaces would contribute to the improvement of the surrounding historic sites.
3. Urban sectors on the periphery of burial grounds where informal settlements are dominant, as in the areas of Al-Qadriya, Al-Abagiya and Arab Al-Yassar, which should be regarded as part of the first category because they include important tombs amid, and sometimes inside, the courtyard of dwelling blocks.
4. Finally, pockets of lived-in space, such as Imam Al-Shaf'i, Imam El-Leithi, Sidi Oqba, Al- Sadat Al-Wafa'iya, Omar Ibn Al-Fared and Tunsi in the southern necropolis; and Qaytbay and Barquq in the eastern necropolis. These pockets include very important monuments and are surrounded by tombs of architectural significance.
According to the condition of the soil and the state of deterioration of the built environment, El Kadi advises the adoption of various solutions: in the case of sectors comprising remarkable architectural monuments, the transformation of the entire site into a funerary museum would present definite advantages; in areas including wasteland and tombs ruined beyond repair, on the other hand, the wasted space should be planted with greenery and trees to establish a certain ecological balance; and in the sectors surrounding significant monuments, a separation should be effected between the living areas and the cemetery proper by way of fencing.
As far as the dwellers are concerned, however, El Kadi has no ready answer to improve their lot while preserving the national heritage. She cites Youssef Al-Qa'id, who, in his book Nawm Al-Aghniyaa (The Slumber of the Rich), published in 1983, recorded on one street taken at random 12 tombs endowed with telephones. The same cemetery was connected to electricity lines and water mains and was equipped with six schools, two fire brigade trucks, one pharmacy and a bus station. Four fountains, established on the streets since 1975, allowed for clean water distribution to the inhabitants of the tombs. Much to her chagrin, El Kadi predicts an extension of this arrangement in the years to come, leading to worsening conditions for the preservation of the existing monuments. She anticipates the transformation of the city of the dead into a low-standard city where the main occupation of the inhabitants is and will remain the sorting and burning of Greater Cairo's garbage.
Referring to her dreams of preservation and rehabilitation, she writes in conclusion: "It is perhaps superfluous to formulate ambitions that may prove above the means of a developing country, where there is a crying need for the creation and equipment of new dwellings to accommodate an ever-increasing population. It was, however, necessary to launch the debate by contributing, however modestly, to a new awareness of the need to preserve memory, and treat it kindly."
Reviewed by Fayza Hassan
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